


Far Apart

by nuggetpunk



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Eventual Smut, Everyone Is Alive, Long Distance Relationship, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 20:06:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8174398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuggetpunk/pseuds/nuggetpunk
Summary: JaegerBomb:
  
  but since were doing introductions and ur screen name is a whole mouthful, my name is eren. urs?

   
  It took a bit longer to reply, Eren was starting to feel this Humanity's Strongest had lost interest until,
   
   Humanity's Strongest:
  Levi. 
 (The age difference is about 10 years - Eren is 20 and Levi is 30)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ey fam!  
> So, this is my first official fanfiction (I wrote a few ages ago [as in, literal years] but they all sucked and I found this sucked a little less), so constructive criticism is greatly appreciated!  
> A bit of a slow start imho but starting stories are always horrible for me to write. Again, constructive criticism would be great!

Eren sighed as he ended the call with Jean, flopping down onto his bed, and letting his phone plop down next to him. He had a whole pile of English Lit notes to revise over before he could even start his essay, a responsibility he intended to procrastinate on to the fullest.

Unfortunately, no one else was up for procrastinating except him. Mikasa, (who gave him some of his notes in the first place since she happened to share his class) was actually doing the assignment, Armin was forever buried in piles of schoolwork high enough to make Eren’s head spin, and everyone else was either down a similar path of schoolwork or just working - including Jean apparently. For once the anthropomorphic horse was actually doing something with his life, which made Eren feel obsolete when comparing himself to his more productive friends. To hell if he was going to start that assignment, though, even if it did make himself feel better.

Eren’s head popped up and looked towards his PC. _Yeah. Fuck the assignment._

Eren, still being only on the job hunt and so far unsuccessful, had been switching between marathon rounds of steam games in his library on his computer and _Kitchen Nightmares_ on what was supposed to be his “study” laptop on Youtube (how exactly he discovered so many episodes of the show on Youtube and actually started binge watching them was a mystery to himself). Wanting to give Gordon Ramsey screaming at the top of his lungs a break, he decided to soothe his stressed college student brain by trying to desperately survive in _Dead by Daylight._

Hurrying to excitedly boot up his trusty gaming computer and mentally thanking his parents for his kick ass Christmas gift, Eren kicked back in his desk chair and loaded up the game.

  
Now, Eren considered himself pretty good. He had a decent rank (two ranks ahead of Jean might he add) and a few perks that came in really handy whenever the matchmaker threw a fit and pitted him against a top rank killer, which was often enough that it tended to get frustrating, but Eren was stubborn and would see the game through to the end. His talent was mostly in skill checks, citing his good reflexes, and the Iron Will perk he’d picked up that stopped him making excess noise when injured made him harder to find. All Eren needed now was the Saboteur perk that let him sabotage hooks without a toolkit and he was confident he’d be a formidable survivor for those top rank killer assholes.

Picking his character and Iron Will perk, Eren waited for more players to join him in the lobby. Excited at first, his mood soon waivered as two survivors joined him with relatively low ranks, that mood only being made worse by a goddamn top rank killer joining the game. Fuck everything about Eren’s life in that instant because while the matchmaker spat out unfair matches a fair amount of the time, Eren had never encountered a game that out of proportion. He groaned and flopped back in his chair, giving himself a moment to look up at the dull ceiling of his dorm and let out a quiet string of curses before he sighed, moving his gaze back to the screen of his PC, his head tilting at the sight of a final player joining.

_Huh, one of the top survivor ranks_ , he thought, looking over at their user, _Humanity’s Strongest_. Well, maybe Eren could keep his streak of rage quit free games if there was at least one other decently ranked player beside him… Hopefully this Humanity’s Strongest person felt the same.

  
Evidently they must’ve, as neither they nor Eren dropped out of the game and the match started, dropping him in the Macmillan Estate map – Eren’s personal favourite, in fact.  
Despite the matchmaker mishap, Eren grinned as he could feel the blood start to pump in his veins and his heart speed up as he took in the atmosphere, already beginning to become immersed into the game’s twisted surroundings. It was hard to see, and every crunch of his avatar’s footsteps on twigs and grass into his headset brewed and thickened the tension in the air. This was the kind of shit Eren craved… God, he could almost smell the decay from the ruined and trashed buildings, the dampness of the earth and the stale stench of fear induced sweat. He shivered and tensed as he heard the killer’s bells chime – signalling his foe turning invisible, reminding Eren of what he was here to do. He needed to turn on those damn generators to power up the doors and get the fuck out of here.

The lower level survivors weren’t allies he would count on, but this Humanity’s Strongest was of a different sort. Maybe, just maybe, he could do this. Hell, maybe he could keep the other two alive long enough for them all to escape. He’d certainly try.

Shuffling quietly past boxes, Eren could almost picture the grime, dust and rot the old wooden crates would have been subjected to. The place was littered with them, shipping crates and containers providing a limited amount of cover, the crumbled walls that were only a faint memory of what was once buildings, possibly offices, scattered around the overgrown area. Ducking from crate to crate, he quickly found his first generator, tucked away behind an old wall. He was good at this, his reflexes were great, rarely did he ever blow up the generators he set out to fix. He could do this.

As he approached the old, beaten generator from the side, he heard the familiar tinkering sound before the generator started to already hum to life with a weak putter. Relief washed over him as he realised that not only was someone one step ahead of him and fixing the generator, but that person was also the survivor known as Humanity’s Strongest, Eren recognising their avatar immediately.  
Eren was intrigued by that name – what made the player pick it? Most people on steam chose stupid names like Microsoft Word or Lil Poundcake, even Eren’s own was JaegerBomb. Eren liked Humanity’s Strongest, though, it sounded suave and mysterious.  
Putting aside his curiosity, Eren focused on fixing the generator with his new survival buddy. Who was actually pretty good, both of them were already making great progress on an otherwise slow task, filling the bar to repair the ancient machine over halfway in under record timing. The chances of survival in this round increasing, Eren’s mood followed the same trend, so much so that he focused more on the generator and less on the fact that the killer he’d been given this round was invisible. Which meant no prior warning to them just turning up and clubbing a bitch in the back of the head.  
As the thought eventually occurred to the brunette to pan his camera around as best he could to avoid such clubbing, he was already too late. The bell chimed, blaringly loud from behind him, and his blood turned cold as fear rippled through him. He jumped in his chair at the harsh whack on his back from the killer’s club and he desperately tried to abandon the generator, the generator that was so close to turning on it wasn’t funny, and watched as Humanity’s Strongest fled off in the distance, leaving him to deal with the killer.

Unsurprisingly, after a tense chase that involved Eren almost being caught and having to make his way across half the map, he saw the ding of the generator that he and Humanity’s Strongest worked on together flick on in the distance. He was bleeding, terrified, and he needed to change his pants, but he was partly on the way to his escape.

After their first encounter, Eren and Humanity’s Strongest had quickly developed a tendency to stumble across each other frequently during the match. Healing each other when wounded, working on generators, and Humanity’s Strongest on backup for whenever one of the other two survivors ended up on a hook and Eren charged in to rescue them, they functioned well as a team, even despite being strangers and having no way of verbal communication. In fact, this was one of the smoothest and possibly best games Eren had played, and he knew damn well what the reason behind that was.  
After a long game, the match ended with all four survivors escaping. A complete and total victory over a top rank killer - it made Eren fuzzy inside, a feeling he hadn't had from winning a game in a while. There were a lot of close calls, and at one point Eren had ended up on a hook only to be barely saved by Humanity’s Strongest, but it was an amazing game. In fact, It took every ounce of self-restraint Eren had to keep from sending everyone on his college campus deaf from how hard he wanted to cheer.  
So good, actually, Eren found himself sending a friend request to Humanity’s Strongest on Steam after the round was done, the biggest, cheesiest grin on his face as he did so.

Until he realised his request would probably never be accepted… Maybe that wasn’t the best idea… His grin fell to a frown, Eren being deep in thought. Would it be weird?  
Eh, Eren just shrugged it off. It was a stranger over the internet who happened to be damn good at Dead by Daylight, and Eren merely wanted to have the chance to play another round with them sometime. Not creepy or weird at all, yeah? Players like Humanity’s Strongest were a rarity, there was no reason to not even attempt to have players like them in his list. Yeah, everything was fine. Didn’t even matter if it was accepted or not, anyway.  
However, even with all that reasoning of how it wasn’t that important he gave himself, Eren still felt a tinge of disappointment when in the coming days, his friend request hadn’t been accepted. To make matters worse, Humanity’s Strongest’s profile was on private, meaning Eren couldn’t even have a peep at their games library, only being able to see they were on a stupidly high level on steam.

 

* * *

 

It had been almost a week since Eren’s heavenly round of _Dead by Daylight_ and he'd forgotten the request almost completely. For the first few days, Eren checked up a few times, but hadn't seen the notification to say he and this user were friends. He was a little disappointed, sure, but soon the whole ordeal went to the back of his mind as he actually made an attempt to start his essay. A whole week of nothing, and Eren was now four run-on sentences in and the piece was due in a few days.

Hands raking through his hair, Eren sighed. He was never going to get this done, he should have started earlier...

Great, now he was in a shit mood, thanks college. Should just give up and live his future as a stripper - male strippers make a lot right?

Eren had soon found himself googling the average salary of a male stripper, something that was definitely productive and was not at all an excuse to avoid his paper. Never. Eren was a hard working, motivated student who always kept a level head and never, never ever _ever_ got frustrated with his work or teachers at all. Not once has he had an argument with any of his professors. No.

Eren had now managed to navigate away from the salary of a male stripper and now onto some tips and pointers from male strippers in the industry that were on the same search page. If this was his backup plan it was extremely responsible and productive to look into the industry he was going into. Yes. Very mature, not at all a tool to escape his real responsibilities, the responsibilities he was putting himself into a shitload of debt to have the privilege to do. Which he was definitely going to do, of course. Right now.

He forced himself away from the article on male strippers, reopening his word document and focusing his mental energy onto another sentence. He'd get in the zone, pump out half the paper right now today, he just needed to actually get into the mood first.

And then his steam went off. Well, he should really check that in case it was a life threatening emergency and one of his friends could only communicate through steam messages, or maybe his credit card information had been hacked. Definitely needs to be checked.

Eren navigated away from his word document and opened up steam again, expecting a message from Jean or one of his other friends to see if he wanted to join a game - apart from the obvious emergency situation, of course. What he didn't expect was the fact his friend request had been accepted - that he was now friends with Humanity's Strongest. Eren had forgotten all about it, but now remembering the game they played together made him bubble with excitement.

Eren decided to have a little look through his profile, the player was obviously a skilled gamer already, but when Eren started looking they had shitloads of badges and a huge library of games - most of which they'd gotten all of the achievements for.

And Eren thought he was good at games. Jesus.

The thing was, though, while this player obviously knew how to play, they didn't have many friends on steam. Usually players towards the higher end near 100 had friends coming out of the ass, but they had very few. They also didn't have a bio, and their icon was just an image of two wings, one black and the other white. Hm.

Nevertheless, Eren was going to channel all the energy he should have put into studying into wasting time with his new steam friend. It was decided.

Opening up the messenger, Eren started to type.

**JaegerBomb:**

_hey! u might not remember me, but we played a game of dead by daylight together and u were really good, so i wanted to add u so we could play again sometime?  
_

 

**Humanity's Strongest:**

_I remember. You weren't half bad. Even though you kept dicking around and trying to save everyone._

 

**JaegerBomb:**

_whats so wrong with that?? the aim of the game is for everyone to survive yknow  
_

 

**Humanity's Strongest:**

_When their playing makes me think a fucking newborn got to the keyboard that aim is worth shit all._

 

Eren chortled a bit at that. This player was a hardass, but Eren didn't expect much less to be frank. They were a good gamer, and they knew they were good.

 

**JaegerBomb:**

_i guess that would make me a better player since i saved two newborns and escaped :p  
_

 

**Humanity's Strongest:  
**

_Wouldn't that make me the best player since I had to go round up your dumb ass when you got hooked trying to save one of the newborns?_

 

**JaegerBomb:**

_that was only once! who healed u multiple times when u got bitch slapped by the skull club?? huh??_

_thats right_

_it was me_

_and the crowd goes fuckin wild_

 

**Humanity's Strongest:**

_You got lucky._

_What's your name, anyway? It's bad enough reading JaegerBomb on my screen but actually referring to you as it makes constipation feel like a wet dream._

 

**JaegerBomb:**

_harsh!_

_whats wrong with my screen name?? i think its hilarious!  
_

 

**Humanity's Strongest:**

_It's shit. I feel I conveyed that effectively enough._

_Apparently not.  
_

 

**Jaegerbomb:**

_if i wanted ur opinion i would have asked for it  
_

 

**Humanity's Strongest:**

_You did.  
_

 

**JaegerBomb:**

_shhh!_

_but since were doing introductions and ur screen name is a whole mouthful, my name is eren. urs?_

 

 

It took a bit longer to reply, Eren was starting to feel this Humanity's Strongest had lost interest until,

 

**Humanity's Strongest:**

_Levi._

 


End file.
